You can get a free State Map...which aren't as important as back in the ol' days before GPS, but I still like to get them to collect for my travel scrapbooks or to do crafts with.
Generally when planning a trip I'll go online and find things to do ahead of time, but sometimes we have found things in the Brochures that I had not found online. And we have found neat and interesting things to see or do that we didn't know about on the way to our destination. (We usually leave home early, but check-in time isn't until later, so we have plenty of time to meander our way along, or stop for a picnic or unscheduled tourist attraction. Makes for a much more relaxed trip than trying to reach our destination like it's an Appointment with the Boss or something.)
Many places we visit will have brochures in racks in the hotel lobby or a restaurant, but generally those are for the more local area. The Welcome Centers cover the entire state so though we might be visiting 'this area' this trip, if we see something interesting or exciting in the brochures then we might come back and visit 'that area' another trip.
I mentioned stopping for a picnic; we have had more than a few picnics at Welcome Centers (and parks). Ham-and-cheese sandwiches, chips, and Chips Ahoy cookies never taste better than at a picnic table.
Most of the Welcome Center picnics occur on the way home, at the Georgia WC, when we're finished with Vacation and just of the mindset to get back home and don't want to do alot of stopping; at the Welcome Center we can stretch our legs, use the potty, eat.
I like to visit the Georgia WC and look for Brochures and info on Attractions and Events here closer to home, we might could go for the day, or a even a weekend.
Besides Travel information, a large part of the reason I like to stop at the State Line Welcome Centers are for fodder for my Travel Scrapbooks.
One thing I like to do is take pictures of us - the kids and John, the kids and me, the kids, me and John, etc. - beside the *Welcome to (State)* signs most all of the WC's will have. Back when I started doing that it was just something to do, but now so many years later it's neat to look back and see how the kids have grown so much during our travels.
And, again, there's the Brochures. Colorful and informative, telling about the place(s) we visited. They're great accompaniment to my own photos and other memorablia on the Scrapbook pages.
Although I kept a scrapbook as a kid - the kind with the black construction-paper type pages bound in a leather-type book - I got into the new-fangled Scrapbooking craze back in the late 90's - early 2000's, with all the printed papers and die cuts and stickers and eyelets and hundreds of dollars worth of etc. I bought and bought all that stuff - and hardly did anything with it. Most of it is still packed in my plastic stacked-drawers organizer.
My Grandmother passed away in 1994; my parents inherited her house, but didn't do anything with her things until they retired and moved into it a few years later. Mom let me go through her albums and pictures and papers and such, and found out she had also been a Scrapbooker, years ago, back in the 1960's. The bound leather-type albums with the black construction-paper type pages.
I realized I really liked the simplicity of the old-fangled scrapbooks - only things like photos, napkins, matchbooks, ticket stubs, brochures, postcards - no printed papers to distract the eye from the content, no stickers or die cuts or do-dads. So I decided that I wouldn't buy or use anymore of the current Scrabooking gee-gaws, and only use actual things obtained during travel, or otherwise 'found'. For instance, I was making a Family Genealogy Scrapbook; one of my Great-Grandfathers was a Civil War veteran. I don't have a picture of him, so I went online and looked up Civil War images. I found a pencil-drawing of the back-side of a soldier, and a silhouette of a soldier, so they were merely representative, but not trying to pretend to be the man himself. I printed them out and mounted them like I would have a regular photo to go on the Scrapbook page.
I printed off a few more things to use, but then I saw I had a shiny, color brochure from one of the Civil War Memorial parks we had visited at some point in the past, and there was a long, almost border-looking picture of soldiers fighting. I cut it out and trimmed it down and it did make a perfect, colorful border along the bottom of my Scrapbook page.
It turned out to be one of the best pages I've ever made, and was made from nothing but graphics printed off the internet and cut from a Travel Brochure.
So now when I'm at the Welcome Centers I'll pick up any/all Brochures that has anything - a logo or picture or whatever - that I might want to use in a Scrabook one day.
All of the Brochures in the pictures here are real Brochures from Grannie's scrapbook, circa 1960's. Which at the time I got these, was only like 30'ish years ago. I was born in the 60's, so they are around my age, give or take, but I don't feel nearly as old as some of these brochures look.
Several of these places aren't even in existance anymore. Others are remodeled to the point they aren't even the same place.
Travel Brochures are a great collectible - not to mention Free. Collect them now and maybe have a record of places long gone by the time your kids are adults.
There's also alot of HomeSchool activities that can be done using travel brochures and info gleaned from the Welcome Centers.
So if you have a free Saturday sometime, take a Road Trip to one of your State Line Welcome Centers. You can hit the next state going, and your own state returning. Have a nice picnic and collect some free travel brochures for places you've been, and places you'd like to go.
